


Come Back to Me

by Antigone2



Category: Bishoujo Senshi Sailor Moon | Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-20
Updated: 2020-04-20
Packaged: 2021-03-02 01:28:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,583
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23756881
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Antigone2/pseuds/Antigone2
Summary: It isn't the first time this love has bent the very fabric of the universe, defied the logic of life and death, time and space. It is, however, possibly the most surprising.
Relationships: Chiba Mamoru/Tsukino Usagi, King Endymion/Tsukino Usagi
Comments: 10
Kudos: 113





	Come Back to Me

**Author's Note:**

> written for UglyGreenJacket's UsaMamo spring exchange.

_In silent screams,_

_In wildest dreams_

_I never dreamed of this..._

_These hands had to let it go free_

_And this love came back to me_

-This Love, Taylor Swift

* * *

It isn't the first time this love has bent the very fabric of the universe, defied the logic of life and death, time and space. It is, however, possibly the most surprising.

Usagi never felt this empty before. Never been this lonely, the girl with love like air, all encompassing and infinite and unable to breathe without it. She presses her forehead to the window, breath steaming into a fog on the glass.

He is gone. He is gone and she feels it in her veins because she'd never not shared a planet with him, not since the day she was born in Tokyo and he was somewhere nearby, toddling through a house he'd never remember, to people he never knew.

But her lungs are empty and her friends new and old are her ventilators but now they are all asleep and she's gasping for something that just isn't there, and maybe - a treacherous voice whispers from her deepest of insecurities - maybe it never was.

The Silver Crystal thrums through the air and mingles with her longing.

* * *

Along another shimmering thread twisting through the mists of time, a figure moves in uncanny silence through the crystalline tomb that was once a dazzling city. No breath stirs the air by his face, no sound comes from his footsteps on the marble floor. He walks the palace like a ghost, retracing steps and steps as if pretending he can do any good.

King Endymion has never felt this empty before, never been this lonely - even as an orphaned child alone in the biggest city in the world - there was always a gentle pull toward something he was meant for. Some _one_.

Unreachable beauty entombed in a crystal sepulchre, peaceful and lovely and lifeless. She is gone.

He feels it in his very bones, the absence of her like a vacuum through his soul, and it destroys him.

The Golden Crystal stirs, calling for its silver mate along the stream of time.

And it answers.

* * *

The odd thing is, he isn't afraid. Even though Endymion has found himself somewhere he doesn't recognize and cannot remember how he got there, there is no panic, no fear. Instead, he feels… safe.

It is curiosity that has him remove a glove and press a hand to the ground (he is solid here, not a hologram but a living, breathing man again). The Earth does not speak to him as usual, and instead his powers indicate he is somewhere outside of space and time, away from but not disconnected from his home.

"Pluto will be pissed," he thinks bemusedly, standing up and looking around the endless blue sky and green grass.

A figure appears as if walking from a fog, squinting with a delicate hand shading her eyes. "Hello?" she calls, "Is someone there?"

Usagi is not afraid, per se, but she feels wary, even as the grass is soft beneath her feet, the sky a brilliant blue overhead. She has experienced malicious illusions before, and this doesn't feel like that.

She realizes she's not alone when she sees a figure before her, appearing like a mirage. She calls out, "Hello? Is someone there?" but the words die in her throat as she finds herself face to face with the king of Crystal Tokyo.

Usagi is older than the last time Endymion saw her - when she'd been a frightened, baby-faced girl in a Sailor suit clutching at his past self's hand and looking at her future kingdom with wide, vulnerable eyes.

This Usagi is taller, slimmer, her face older and her hair longer. Her eyes are still vulnerable, though, that sea of blue and endless kindness, so open - every emotion laid bare. How he loves those eyes.

"King… um, Your majesty," she says, almost questioning, brows knitting together as she contemplates the proper title to use. He makes an intimidating figure, taller even than Mamoru, and dressed in regalia that belied power and importance: medals and embroidery embellishing his perfectly tailored suit. She bows slightly, feeling silly in her pajama pants and tank top.

In a moment and whish of cape he's on one knee before her, looking at her with intensity flashing in those beautiful (and familiar, so, so familiar) blue eyes. "No!" he says, and he cringes internally - his voice is too harsh, too vehement. There is surprise and contrition in her eyes (those eyes) and his hand is reaching out in comfort before he realizes what he's doing, his fingertips brushing along her cheek. "No," he says, softer now, "please, don't call me that. You never call me that."

Her skin is intoxicating, soft and warm and so alive and so real. Endymion swallows against the overwhelming urge to crush her to him, to feel her hair under his lips and her heart beating against his.

But she is not his wife, not yet. She is on her way to her glittering, promised future, but not quite there - still in 20th century Tokyo, still unwed (although her engagement ring sparkles on her finger), barely an adult, and looking at him with an unsure expression. He pulls his shaking hand back, clenching it into a fist.

"What should I call you then?" she asks, and he stands, clearing his throat.

"My name would be fine," he says. Endymion. Mamoru. To hear 'Mamo-chan' from her lips could easily be his undoing. He leaves it up to her and she lets it go.

"So where are we?" Usagi says, tilting her head and crinkling her nose a bit in that curious rabbit way.

"Somewhere... separate," he answers. Then, "Where, er… when are you from?"

Where along the timeline had this version of his soulmate appeared from? He tries to place her face, her height, even the moon-and-star printed pattern of her pajama pants and comes up empty. She is Princess Serenity hiding in the Golden Kingdom garden, she is 14 year old Usagi Tsukino with a 30% on her test, she is Neo Queen Serenity standing before her people, she is Usagi Tsukino-Chiba on their wedding day, she is a pigtailed toddler and giving him a rose in the hospital - she is everything all at once and it's overwhelming him in the most wonderful way.

She says the year, but it's been a thousand years and the date means little to the king, she can see it in his eyes.

"You're… I mean, Mamo-chan is… in America." She shivers and crosses her arms, making herself smaller. "And you? When…?"

"The Black Moon has attacked Crystal Tokyo. It has not been long since you- Sailor Moon, that is, visited the kingdom."

Usagi nods, looking at him thoughtfully. "So you… are the same, then," she murmurs, "From that… that time."

She doesn't meet his eyes, turning her head to the side and he can see her in profile. Soft tendrils of blonde hair float by her ear, the wistful look in her eyes is haunting.

This Endymion is the same one she saw a few years ago, from the timeline she already knows. It's not proof _her_ Mamo-chan comes back to her. Is it? Setsuna would know. Although, Usagi knows, she would never tell anyway.

She looks up at Endymion again, his face is stoic and his stature proud - he's used to standing with his spine straight, she realizes. Used to ruling an entire planet alongside his wife and-

"Oh," Usagi's voice comes out in a soft hum of realization. "She's… Neo Queen Serenity is still…"

Grief passes across his face for a brief second, Usagi realizes she'd seen the same anguish on his noble features before - when she was 14 and self-absorbed and didn't recognize it for what it was. Because he was a strange authority figure (Usagi never liked authority figures) who had vague warnings and shocking information and the voice from a recurring nightmare. Because Neo Queen Serenity had been a possibly-dead stranger, Chibi-Usa's mother, sure, but not… not…

Usagi steps forward and curls her arms around his waist, her head on his chest, cheek against the buttons of his shirt. "I'm sorry," she says. "I'm so sorry you are all alone." Her arms tighten and her eyes squeeze shut and his body shudders into her hug. _'I'm your family now, Mamo-chan. You'll never be alone again.'_

Endymion hasn't felt touch, not for ages, and his frayed nerves don't know what to do with this, with Usagi's engulfing hug, warm and open, head resting against his heart which beats as if to rush out and meet her.

She's so close and so warm, and her head easily slips right beneath his chin, and he doesn't know whether to weep for joy or for desperation.

"Thank you," is all he can say through the lump in his throat.

She looks up, chin against his chest, and his hands find their way to her face, cupping it gently and looking into her eyes. Those perfect, precious, fathomless eyes - how he missed them. How he missed all of this.

Usagi swallows, hardly daring to breathe as his thumbs trace her cheekbones, his gaze on her like she was the most precious, important thing in the world. His touch feels like a place she is so desperately homesick for.

Tears burn but don't fall, her lip trembling. "Oh, Usako," he breathes, as if in mourning.

And that's when she starts to cry.

It comes over her like a wave, and she can't stop the blubbering tears, complete with shaking shoulders and loud, hiccupping sobs. She buries her face into his chest, even though her nose is running and mouth is open and she's aware the fabric she's dampening with her spit and tears and snot is definitely more expensive than, say, her house. But she can't stop the floodgates once they've been opened.

Because his warmth, his arms, his voice… it's all Mamo-chan, but it's also not, because this is the 'him' that belongs to a woman with a thousand more years under her skin. This is the version of Mamoru who loved her, who married her, who didn't abandon her without a word. And she cannot keep him.

"Why did he leave me?" she sobs, misery breaking her voice apart. "Why doesn't he love me anymore?" It was like the rooftop, when the rain mixed with her tears and poor Seiya trying to help her through a meltdown, but this is so much more intense, here in this land between dreams.

Endymion feels her heartbreak, her anguish - it floods him, through her skin to his - and he's almost brought to his knees by it. "Usako-," he fumbles for her face again, lifting it back to face his.

She's puffy and snotty and her hair is damp with tears and she's still trembling. She looks at him with a sheepish remorse- 'I'm sorry I lost it on you,' her eyes say. 'This isn't your fault.' And his fingers brush the tears from her eyes and he looks at her with mirroring sadness.

"I promise you, wherever Mamoru is, he never stops loving you."

She sniffles, doubt filling her eyes and Endymion takes a chance at using his psychometry on her - he knows she won't be used to this, not for many years - and he works so hard at being so, so gentle, so, so careful…

Shutting his eyes, he lets himself feel - the worshipful, endless, all-encompassing love that is as much a part of him as his very being. For her - the princess, the school girl, the disaster blonde, the super hero, the girl with the odango'ed hair and ready smile. He lets her feel - just a little bit- not too much, not too quickly - for a moment, the depth and breadth of his love.

Usagi catches her breath, grasps the fabric of his shirt and looks up at him in awe.

"I promise you," he whispers, lips to her damp forehead. "He will _never_ stop loving you."

"Then why is he gone?" she manages in a watery, wavery voice.

"I don't know," Endymion answers, honestly. He tucks a strand of her hair behind her ear, looking deep into her eyes. "But I promise he will come back to you. If he has to claw his way back from the depths of hell, he will _always_ come back to you."

That's when she kisses him. Suddenly and quickly lifting herself to her toes and pressing her lips to his. Her mouth is all tear-salt and toothpaste and that hint of strawberry lipgloss she always wore as a teen. And he responds with a passion that surprises him, kissing her back, this slip of a girl, his future wife, his future queen, his everything.

He catches her hair in his hands, holding her by the waist, pulling her closer still. Her softness, her taste, her scent - it drowns him completely, willingly. He'd gorge himself to death on her sweetness, since he thought he might never experience it again.

Perhaps he shouldn't encourage this, shouldn't enjoy it as much as he does but - but it's just a kiss, and he needs this so, so badly.

"You have to go, don't you?" she whispers against his lips, after a few blissful moments. She speaks with an air of sad maturity that seems out of place with her youthful Usagi-self.

"I'm yours," he murmurs, "body and soul. And if you need me, I will stay."

She shuts her eyes, letting herself imagine - just for a moment - that they stay like this, embracing in this heaven - for the rest of time. Not quite the right fit but close enough.

He's stroking her hair and kissing the crown of her head, and Usagi loses herself for a long moment in the warmth of his arms, the skin of his neck against her cheek, her lips.

Then she stands on tip-toes again, moves her lips to his ear, her breath tickling the hair by his neck as her hands twine together behind his head.

"She isn't dead," Usagi whispers in his ear. Pluto might be mad, the future might be changed, but she can't let him suffer. Not her Mamo-chan.

She would always break all the most sacred rules for him.

"She comes back to you, too," she says. Then she steps back down, regarding his shocked and hopeful look, the lightening of his eyes.

"So you have to go back, for her. For Chibi-Usa. For the future. _Our_ future." She gives a quick nod, as if convincing herself as well.

Endymion's fingers catch in her hair, his gaze tender. "You are so strong, Usako. I know how much it hurts but please don't give up on him- on me." He runs a finger along her lower lip, and she shuts her eyes to his touch.

It would be so easy to stay. But things aren't easy in true love. The fairy tales don't tell you that part. Or maybe they do and she just never listened hard enough.

"Okay," she whispers, meeting his eyes. "I trust you, Mamo-chan." She takes his hand in both of hers, even as the fog builds on the edge of her vision. He presses his lips to her hand, a 'farewell' worthy of a kingdom court.

He has to… he will..

"Come back to me…," the words are on her lips as she wakes.


End file.
